Migrating from a Third Party Host to Libsyn Using the Libsyn Publisher Hub

Welcome to Libsyn! If you are looking to migrate to Libsyn from a 3rd party podcast host and are hoping to maintain or build a publishing workflow on a WordPress site, you have come to the right tutorial.

This tutorial assumes the following:

You currently have a WordPress site

You currently have a podcast hosted somewhere other than Libsyn

Your podcast is not hosted on your WordPress site

Let’s get started!

Preparing to Migrate

To get started, you will first need to create a Libsyn show. To do so, go to our signup page.

The show slug is a unique identifier in the Libsyn system for your show. Our support staff can use your slug to locate your show. The slug is also used to generate the URLs for your show. It should be alphanumeric, 3 or more characters, and always start with a letter.

Next, select a subscription level and enter a promo code if you have one.

Read the terms of service, agree to the terms and hit signup at the bottom.

Importing Content

With your Libsyn account setup and your Libsyn Publisher Hub plugin installed, the next step is to import the content. This process will grab all the stuff (media, images, titles, descriptions, feed configurations, all that stuff) into your Libsyn show. Don’t worry, we will verify the data has transferred properly before finalizing the migration.

Notice the Episode Link column. The links found there are the permalinks for each post. Clicking on them will show you the post on the front end of your site.

When you are ready, scroll to the bottom and hit Import Local Feed .

The import will begin to run. The page will refresh several times, and will continue to refresh until the process is complete. This will take several minutes, the larger the feed and the more the media, the longer it will take to complete. Be patient, and allow time for the process to finish.

Notice the Feed Import Status. This will say Processing while the process is ongoing. If the import completes successfully, it will say Successful (as you can see below). If it does not, it will say Failed. In those few cases, reach out to our support team (support@libsyn.com) for assistance.

The Episode Link column will also change, showing the link as unavailable initially, then pending download, and then available. This is the act of the episode being generated in Libsyn, and the media file uploading into your Libsyn space and and attaching to the episode.

At this point, nothing has changed on your WordPress site. All your content from your RSS feed has been imported into Libsyn, so let’s go check our work.

Checking Our Work

The plugin will give you a list of all the episodes it pulled, and you can click on ‘available’ to test the media served from Libsyn. If you wish, you can also double check the show inside Libsyn to make sure all looks well. The places to check inside the Libsyn Dashboard include:

Under Settings –> Show Settings

Under Destinations –> Libsyn Classic Feed

Under Content –> Previously Published

Spot check that you have a show title, description artwork, feed settings, and all your episodes have ‘play’ buttons rather than a ‘T’ next to the title of the episodes. These are all signs that your feed imported correctly (beyond the Successful message received by the plugin).

Changing Over the RSS Feed

The next step is to redirect your 3rd party RSS feed over to your Libsyn feed. This updates iTunes/Apple Podcasts, most other apps and your subscribers to pull from your Libsyn feed going forward.

Replace “http://www.myfeedurl.com/rss.xml” with whatever the URL of the feed you will be using (Libsyn) is.

These redirects, the 301 redirect and the new feed URL tag need to remain in place for a minimum of 4 weeks per iTunes/Apple Podcasts specifications (it doesn’t hurt to leave them in longer). This ensures all your subscribers have a chance to update when their app of choice next refreshes your show in their listing.

Adding the Posts to WordPress

The last piece to this process is add these episodes as WordPress posts with the Libsyn player. The Libsyn Publisher Hub makes this easy, with a one click button that will add the posts for you.

Go back under Libsyn Publisher Hub –> Import Feed. Scroll to the bottom of the page and find and hit the Add Libsyn Player to WordPress Posts button.

A dialog box asking you to confirm this is what you want will appear.

Hit Add Libsyn Player. Give the system a moment to run this process. Depending on how many episodes you have, this process may take a moment or so to complete. The page will refresh and load properly once the process is done.

At this point, your episodes are in Libsyn, your feed will properly update in Apple Podcasts and for your subscribers, and your posts have been created in your WordPress site with the HTML5 player attached to each post.

Final Notes

Regarding Storage in Libsyn

The import process run through the plugin will automatically adjust the storage used inside Libsyn, so the import will not affect your ability to publish new content going forward.

Getting Help

Your complete migration is done! If you need any assistance along the way or after, feel free to reach out to our support team at support@libsyn.com.